


the new girl in town

by Penstills



Category: Addams Family - All Media Types, Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Origin Story, Alternate Universe, Bad Parent Sheila Haywood, Bad Parent Willis Todd, Crossover, Family Feels, Gen, Kinda, Multi, Other, catherine todd is a good mom, jason todd is a baby in this so. enjoy, kinda up for debate at this point but shit im tagging it, motherfucker literally just got born today bruh, oh most definitely, or she's gonna be at least, she's just kinda weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23693629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penstills/pseuds/Penstills
Summary: Catherine may not be Jason’s biological mother, but when has that ever mattered to an Addams? The life and times of Catherine ‘Todd’, mold enthusiast, lover of all things infectious, and mother.(specifically, an origin story, ft. Catherine Addams, accidental baby acquisition, and Willis being pretty nonchalant about the whole affair, all things considered.)
Relationships: Catherine Todd & Jason Todd, Catherine Todd & Jason Todd & Willis Todd, Sheila Haywood & Jason Todd
Comments: 8
Kudos: 113





	the new girl in town

**Author's Note:**

> hey hey hey! here's my addams family/batman crossover fic that I wrote in a frenzy at 12 AM last night. :) after a few quick edits, here it is, being posted! Enjoy!

Catherine loves Gotham at first fright. She’d come into the town on holiday after her graduation from St. Lucien's Finishing School for Heinous Young Women, thinking that it’d be a fun little pit-stop on her way back to the familiar hill-top manor her family called home.

She wanders into the city, newly 19, all dishwater pin-curls and a ratty uniform. She doesn’t expect much from such a mundane sounding place.

Instead, she’d been blown away by the place. Over the moon, taking in the gray skies and black buildings and scowling residents. And that wasn’t even the best part! No, no, no. Not 20 minutes into town, she’d been cornered in a particularly dark alleyway, and nearly robbed of everything within her bat-shaped purse by a knife wielding, masked man. The assailant, had oddly enough, run off after catching wind of her delighted cackling.

Gotham was chock full of costumed lunatics, nefarious plots, and many, many breeds of bacteria. Any sane and sensible person would’ve taken one look and ran for the hills.

Cathy phoned home instead. When Mama picks up the phone, Cathy chatters into the receiver, says: _Oh, you’ll never believe it!... The most wonderful place! The buildings, the stench, the smog...the mold_. Cathy sighs into the receiver, and begs to stay.

Miles away, Wolfgang and Fusillade Addams share a look. They say to each other: _She’s in love, isn’t she? Beautiful thing, and such a lovely place too_. And then Fusillade turns back to the receiver, and tells her daughter to: go ahead and stay.

They work out the details in the following minutes, her parents well-wishing their only daughter happy ventures within the grey city, and agreeing to send her a stipend of her inheritance each month. Before she hangs up, the family recites, cheerily, together: _Don’t Die_! The call ends, and Cathy is left, breathless, in the city of her choice.

* * *

Finding a place to stay isn’t too terribly hard. In fact, it’s rather easy, all things considered. It goes like this: Some woman, very blonde, and very pregnant, collapses in the streets. Eager to witness the complex ritual of summoning a stork, Cathy kneels down next to her. Passersby ignore the two entirely, walking around.

“Thank god! Thank god!” The woman sobs, grabbing onto Cathy’s upper arm and pulling herself up. A man, only a few steps behind her, stops as well, making no move to help. Cathy learns (later, on her ride to the hospital, squeezed between two people in the backseat of a dented taxi) that the woman is named Sheila. Sheila is a few years older than Catherine, and studying to become a doctor.

Sheila waves a claw-like, red-nailed finger to the burly man on Catherine’s left. “That bastard is the one who did this to me! He can introduce himself, can’t he?” she glowers at him, and turns her green face to the cab window.

Catherine turns to ‘that bastard.’ That bastard mumbles from between his lit cigarette, filling the entire backseat with smoke, and doesn’t look up from his phone. “Willis Todd” he says, and nothing else.

The trip to the hospital room is nothing of note. Cathy does wonder, striding after Sheila and dodging around a frazzled orderly attempting to steer her in the other direction, when exactly the stork will be arriving.

Sheila is hefted onto the bed, Willis plops into the hospital chair (having snuffed out his cigarette in the waiting room) and flicks on the television. Cathy settles in near Sheila, and is quickly drawn into the program upon the screen. From what she gathers, watching it so far, it tells the tale of a murderous, lumbering psychopath, who hacks up a bunch of oddly dressed teens with increasingly creative methods. She likes it.

Cathy likes it so much she drifts towards the TV as the nurses flood in, and Sheila begins to scream. The movie is really raising the stakes, Cathy thinks, hearing Sheila shout profanity after profanity behind her. Catherine has never had a rabid stork slice down her middle and yank out a bloody child, but she imagines it must hurt. Speaking of stork---it’s more than a few minutes later before Catherine, so lost in the movie’s wrap up, even notices that the screaming (in real life) has quieted.

She whips around, hoping to catch, just a glimpse, of the stork before it flies off for good (to cap off the end of a fantastic day) but--oh no. It’s already gone, Sheila’s gown is pulled down, and she’s holding a mewling swaddle of blue blankets. Willis is absently peering down at the bundle himself.

Sheila’s eyes find her. She smiles. “You helped me so much. I think you should...” her eyes gleam with something else, “Name the baby. He’s a boy” All this before the bundle is being shoved into Catherine’s arms, and squinty, mole eyes are staring at her from within a wrinkled, red face.

A name! The only thing Catherine has ever named are cross-breed mold samplings, and even then, one couldn’t name a baby boy ‘Festering Death’. So mature sounding for a child.

So Catherine looks back at the TV screen, where that delightful movie is playing end credits, and comes up with the perfect name on the spot. “Jason” she breathes out, and that’s that.

Sheila bursts into tears after the declaration, obviously still emotional after her brutal attack, and wails about her career and mortgages and how she’s not ready to be a parent. Catherine doesn’t blame her: already, the little wrinkled red bundle of skin is beginning to cry alongside the woman. Children seem much more difficult than undead pets, or sentient plants. Maybe that’s why her parents only had one.

Just as Catherine is preparing to hand Jason back to Sheila, and head out to find a poorly insulated motel for the night, the little boy wraps one tiny hand around her nearest finger and sniffles.

And if Catherine loved Gotham (which she did, like no one has ever loved Gotham before), then she loves Jason a hundred times more.

* * *

Jason Todd is born August 16th, 1999 at 5:46 in Gotham Central’s Maternity Ward. That very same day, only a few minutes afterward, adoption and id papers are being brought into the room by tired nurses. The process is quick. Willis shrugs his way through it.

Catherine Addams becomes Jason’s new (adoptive) mother within a few minutes, with Willis as the father. Papers are signed, and copied, soon to be stored away in Gotham Central’s extensively unorganized and poor record keeping system. For all intents and purposes, Jason is now Catherine’s baby.

Sheila sighs, relieved, and thanks Catherine a thousand times over through tears. Then she raises her voice at Willis and _goes, you will provide her with money, you bastard, or so help me, I’ll rip your bal_ \---

Catherine tunes the rest out. She’s bobbing the sniffling boy (her sniffling boy) and wondering how exactly to carry a baby. She should invest in a carriage; or have her parents send down her own from infancy, that snarling, laced creature.

Oh! And her parents. She has to call them tonight, find a phone-booth somewhere, inform them that they have a grandchild. She’s not eager to leave the city she loves so much so soon, but her parents will definitely want a picture of the little boy in the centuries old, may or may not be cursed, dressing gown.

In only a few hours, possibly due to the poor quality of treatment of Gotham Central, Willis, Catherine, Jason and Sheila are heading back to the former’s apartment. Willis seems to be surprisingly fine with letting Cathy live with him, granted she doesn’t “get in the way” and “keeps the baby quiet.” Sheila is chattering away on her phone, and informs the two she’ll be leaving in the morning, heading back to a friend’s house to finish her studies at Gotham U, before she transfers in the fall. No worries, she assures Catherine, I’ve left all the necessary baby supplies at the house.

Catherine is just happy everything has panned out so nicely. Not every 19-year-old is so lucky: their own baby! living in a city they love! new experiences, and a fresh lease on life before death! She gently rocks Jason, sleeping in her arms.

After Catherine climbs up five flights of stairs, baby in arms, behind a grumbling Willis and a cheerful Sheila, and watches the door labelled 26 unlock, to show a grey, semi-damp, poorly lit interior she knows:

I’m home.

* * *

(Later that night, Catherine learns about the secret maternal dark magic of breastfeeding and diaper changing. Jason is much more peculiar than she could’ve anticipated upon their first few moments together, but she does not mind him. Not at all.)

**Author's Note:**

> *fun fact: if you have constructive criticism for this story, I wouldn't mind seeing it. this entire fic is very much a writing exercise, and a weird project I'm probably way too invested in.


End file.
